The World Keeps Spinning On
by Abigail-Nicole
Summary: A series of Discworld drabbles about everything. Features everyone from Christine to Death to Leonard to Vimes and more: originally on the Discworld100 LJ community.
1. Inevitable

**The World Keeps Spinning On**

**Summary:** A series of Discworld drabbles, with everyone from Christine to Death to Leonard and more. 

**Disclaimer:** Pterry's, originally all responses to the discworld100 LJ community, tis a great place over there. Title from 'Gone' by Switchfoot, my new favorite song.

* * *

**Title:** Inevitable  
**Challenge:** Time  
**Word Count:** 104. oops.  
  
He is old, he thinks, and he knows it by the way his fingers ache as they curl around the broom handle, by the way he squints to see the cherry trees. He can feel it, Time pulling at him, and he thinks with a trace of bittersweet memory that it is not completely true you can shed it forever.  
  
The cherry trees bloom and sometimes, if he remembers hard enough, they even bear fruit.  
  
He watches the spinners go by and remembers Lobsang, remembers the days when Time was no stranger to him.  
  
And soon, he thinks, he will be ready to go. 


	2. Fading At The Seams

**_Fading At The Seams_**

**Words**: 100 **Challenge:** Time **Notes**: I _love_ this challenge! There's a Goo Goo Dolls lyric in here, kudos if you see where. Christine, a little-used character, stars here.  
  
She smiles for the mirror, _pretty pretty tonight_, and covers her wrinkles as best she can, tiny crows feet around her eyes. She pulls on her dress, _still fits after all, _and sighs gently; because she knows she can't sing, because it's a wave of dizziness and she catches herself on the table before she falls over. But she will meet her crowd and she will sing.  
  
She thinks of Perdita, and wonders where her dreams went.  
  
But Christine is always in the spotlight, and she must fight time with everything she has.  
  
She never did believe in the inevitable. 


	3. Soon Comes The Day

Title: Soon Comes the Day  
  
Words: 100  
  
Challenge: Time  
  
Disclaimer: Pterry's, same as always.  
  
Notes: I'm having a field day with this challenge. Don't be surprised if I write even more. Title is from the Wheel of Time, kudos if you guess where.

* * *

_Sybil_ always said that there was a time for everything.  
  
Vimes thinks about time, sometimes, when the rain falls softly on his head and the goosebumps crawl up his spine, _someone walking over my grave_, and he remembers about…everything. He should be dead by now, he knows, rain trickling, chilling, down his collar, and sometimes he thinks that the world made more sense through the bottom of a bottle. He thinks of John Keel, and wonders if he even knows his past, and of the monks, and questions how much time means.  
  
He wonders sometimes when his time will come.  
  



	4. Sifting Sand

Title: Sifting Sand  
  
Challenge: Time  
  
Words: 100 not counting title

* * *

_There is a time for everything,_ she thinks, and she hears him at the door and it opens.  
  
NO CARD GAMES THIS TIME, he said, and she smiled a little.  
  
"I know," she said, and it dissolved into a cough. "I've lived a good life."  
  
YOU HAVE DONE MUCH WITH WHAT TIME YOU WERE GIVEN.  
  
"Don't have to tell me," she said, her voice barely a whisper, but he could hear her, she knew. He heard everything. "Will I see them?"  
  
I DO NOT KNOW. He stretched his hand and looked at the lifetimer in his palm. There was a gentle sigh as the last sand hit the bottom, and Granny Weatherwax smiled and was gone. 


	5. Perfection

**Title: **Perfection  
**Challenge:** a mistake  
**Notes: **Um. I'm all angsty lately, but I like this. Idea comes from Liebling's story Sky, HP. Vimes is Pterry's.

--

It was a mistake, Vimes reflected bitterly, staring up at the stars, water flowing around him. A mistake to pick up the first bottle, a mistake to pick up the third. And sixth. Poor old Samuel Vimes, drinking himself to death. Oh look, he's in the gutter again, don't worry bout it, he'll be round come morning

He stared up at the stars. City boys didn't see many stars. But stars were.. perfect. Beautiful. In their black_black _sky...Stars were always perfect, glittering, winking at him, laughing silently at hungover Samuel Vimes, lying in the gutter.

The stars were perfect.

Samuel Vimes was the mistake.


	6. Windows Into Another Life

**Title: **Windows Into Another Life  
**Challenge:** a mistake  
**Words: **100  
**Notes: **Vetinari and Leonard are Pterry's, much as I'd love to own both of them. Don't know if I captured what I wanted to, but I tried. Once again, originally for discworld100 LiveJournal.

--

Vetinari didn't make mistakes.

That's what the people said, what all the people believed. He was the Patrician, he was cold, calculating. He knew all the little wheels, he knew how they turned, and he knew Ankh-Morpork better than anyone. Even his flaws were carefully calculated to give the image that he wanted to present, everything firmly under his control. Vetinari didn't make mistakes.

But sometimes, he looks at paintings from Leonard of Quirm. And it is looking through those windows into another life that Vetinari feels small pangs of regret, and wonders if he makes mistakes after all.


	7. A Flightless Mistake

**Title**: A Flightless Mistake  
**Challenge**: a mistake  
**Word Count:** 100  
**Disclaimer:** Characters not mine.

* * *

The Watch house was silent as Vimes slowly, deliberately, raised one eyebrow.  
  
"You were attacked," he said levelly. Nobby nodded feverishly. "By…strange black and white creatures," he added, and Colon and Nobby nodded in unison. Vimes gave them a hard stare. "Who looked like they were wearing tuxedos."  
  
"Down by the Unseen University, sir," Nobby said earnestly. "All sorts of strange stuff down there, wizards talking about making mistakes in time and space."  
  
"And what did the wizards call these creatures?" Vimes asked the two sheepish yet defiant officers before him.  
  
Colon shifted uneasily. "They called them penguins," he muttered. 


	8. Constant Vigil

**Title:** Constant Vigil  
**Words: **100  
**Challenge: **pirate  
**Notes:** "But Verence had backed away at the first sight of the Twins, toddling hand in hand along the midnight corridors, their tiny ghosts a memorial to a deed darker than even the usual run of regicidal unpleasantness." -_Wyrd Sisters_

_-----_

They were pirate slaves, the rumors went, back when there had been rumors at all. Children, two albino children that looked exactly alike, sold to the noble King of Lancre. Red lines on white skin—toes, knees, stomach, head, _neck_.

Now there is no talk of their looks. There is no one to see them but cats, half-soulled cats, watching them in midnight corridors, watch the phantoms hand-in-hand, their constant vigil. Silent tears and still-bleeding _redblack_ lines, haunting the picture of the _King of Lancre _who _rescued_ them from piracy.

The picture is ever-smiling.

But the Twins are always crying.


End file.
